mosquito
EnglishEdit
EtymologyEdit
Borrowed from Spanish mosquito (“gnat”), diminutive of mosca (“fly”), from Latin musca (“fly”), from Proto-Indo-European *mūs- (“fly, stinging fly, gnat”). Cognate with West Flemish meuzie (“mosquito”), dialectal Swedish mausa (“mosquito”), Lithuanian musė (“a fly”) and Sicilian muschitta (“midge”). See also midge.
PronunciationEdit
- (Canada, US) IPA(key): /məˈski.toʊ/
Audio (US) (file) - (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /mɒsˈkiː.təʊ/
Audio (UK) (file) - Rhymes: -iːtəʊ
NounEdit
mosquito (plural mosquitos or mosquitoes)
- A small flying insect of the family Culicidae, the females of which bite humans and animals and suck blood, leaving an itching bump on the skin, and sometimes carrying diseases like malaria and yellow fever.
- 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, OCLC 1167497017:
- I do not quite know what it was that made me poke my head out of the friendly shelter of the blanket, perhaps because I found that the mosquitoes were biting right through it.
HypernymsEdit
Derived termsEdit
- antimosquito
- malaria mosquito (Anopheles spp.)
- mosquito bar
- mosquito bite
- Mosquito Coast
- mosquito coil
- mosquito fern (Azolla spp.)
- mosquito fleet
- mosquito hawk (Tipulomorpha or Epiprocta)
- mosquito net
- mosquito netting
- mosquito wire
- mosquitocide
- mosquitoey
- mosquitofish (Gambusia spp. et al.)
- mosquitogenic
- tiger mosquito (Aedes spp.)
Related termsEdit
DescendantsEdit
TranslationsEdit
VerbEdit
mosquito (third-person singular simple present mosquitos, present participle mosquitoing, simple past and past participle mosquitoed)
- To fly close to the ground, seemingly without a course.
GalicianEdit
PronunciationEdit
NounEdit
mosquito m (plural mosquitos)
ItalianEdit
NounEdit
mosquito m (plural mosquiti)
Old SpanishEdit
EtymologyEdit
From mosca, mosco (“fly”) + -ito.
PronunciationEdit
NounEdit
mosquito m (plural mosquitos)
- Diminutive of mosca; a mosquito.
- c. 1250, Alfonso X, Lapidario, f. 107v:
- […] ſera aguardado del danno delos moſquitos. ¬ de todas maneras de moſcas que seá pozonadas o mordedores. / Et eſto es mas deſcendiédo ſobreſta piedra la útud de fiǵa de moſq́to, o de alguna deſtas otras moſcas que dixiemos.
- […] he will be kept from the harm of mosquitos and all manners of flies that are venomous or that bite. And this will happen more when over this stone descends the virtue of the figure of the mosquito, or that of another one of the flies we mentioned.
- […] ſera aguardado del danno delos moſquitos. ¬ de todas maneras de moſcas que seá pozonadas o mordedores. / Et eſto es mas deſcendiédo ſobreſta piedra la útud de fiǵa de moſq́to, o de alguna deſtas otras moſcas que dixiemos.
- c. 1250, Alfonso X, Lapidario, f. 107v:
DescendantsEdit
PortugueseEdit
EtymologyEdit
PronunciationEdit
- Hyphenation: mos‧qui‧to
NounEdit
mosquito m (plural mosquitos)
DescendantsEdit
- → Hunsrik: Muskitt
SpanishEdit
EtymologyEdit
mosca + -ito (diminutive suffix), or Old Spanish moquito. Cognate with Sicilian muschitta (“midge”).
PronunciationEdit
NounEdit
mosquito m (plural mosquitos)
- mosquito
- gnat
- (Mexico, colloquial) trimmer
- (literally) Diminutive of mosco (“small fly”)
Derived termsEdit
DescendantsEdit
- → Belarusian: маскі́т (maskít)
- → Dutch: muskiet
- → Esperanto: moskito
- → English: mosquito
- → Estonian: moskiito
- → French: moustique (with metathesis)
- → German: Moskito
- →⇒ Icelandic: moskítófluga
- → Latvian: moskīts
- → Norman: moustique (with metathesis)
- → Russian: моски́т (moskít)
- → Yiddish: מאָסקיט (moskit)
- → Ukrainian: москі́т (moskít)
See alsoEdit
- jején m
Further readingEdit
- “mosquito”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014